Rising Shards

Aira hoped to use the time back at Rising Shards to think after everything that had just happened. She was told she’d have to stay in a special room to ensure she didn’t help Ovie’s mission any more than she already had. Since Laenie was determined to be a more active threat, especially with her Exa Cani form, she had to be taken somewhere else. Which was maybe for the best. Aira wasn’t sure Laenie wanted to see her then. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to see Laenie either.

The students deemed to not be active threats that were from Wildfire Hearts had to wait in a study room in the library. Aira wanted to grab a book, but they wouldn’t let her. She thought about teleporting quickly to grab one, but that might make them more suspicious. It felt like detention as she sat in a room quietly with Rain, Chellsi, Mikeila-Keila, Elisa, and some other students she didn’t recognize where none of them were allowed to talk per the orders of the prefect assigned to watch over them. The room had glass panels, and she wished she hadn’t made the choices that had led her to this lonely place, especially seeing all the chatting outside. They were all in lockdown partly because of Aira’s own decisions, but they were still finding ways to be cheerful. Even in the muddled mix of emotions she currently felt, Aira did feel a twinge of hope that she could be out there with them soon.

***

Latte took a big sip of her coffee, making a really loud and obnoxious slurping sound that made Roux’s headache worse. She was trying to think about big and important things about herself, not gross noises.

“Hey,” Latte said. “How do you think Lillia’s doing?”

“I don’t know,” Roux said. “Probably good because she kicks so much ass? Getting Koridia’s idiotic self unstuck from whatever void node she fell in…Lillia will probably have them back in an hour tops all on her own.”

“True,” Latte said. Another annoyingly loud slurp. She added in some “Mmm!”s and some lip smacks which were just painful to listen to.

The coffee looks super hot, how is she chugging it like that?

“Hey,” Latte said. “Look over there.” She pointed to one of the study rooms where some of the students who ended up at Wildfire Hearts then back here had to sit.

“Yes? Yeah?” Roux asked, really wishing she brought her eGame and headset to drone out Latte on a caffeine rush.

“What do you think they’re doing in there?”

“Sitting? They don’t look like they’re having a good time.” Roux said.

“I’m gonna see if they’ll let me in.”

“Good idea, go, yes!” Roux said, encouraging Latte to stand up. As Latte ran off, Roux internally cheered. “Go, you coffee drinking little…OK, phew, she’s gone.”

The other people at the table with her was Caeda Firae, who had a big lilac squirrel tail that Roux really wanted to just smush her face into, and Scrungy, the one who beat up Iris, which was hilarious but Roux also now found Scrungy terrifying. Roux was hoping she would leave. Both of them were new and hadn’t made a decent impression yet.

“I should be with them…” Caeda muttered.

“What was that?” Roux asked.

“I’m supposed to be making an impact,” Caeda said. “Not just sitting here. Especially with Clover going with…her…”

Roux wasn’t sure if Caeda was talking to her or just rambling to herself. Either way, it was annoying.

“I wanna get out of here too,” Scrungy said. “I’m gonna see if they’ll let me out to take a dump at least.”

“Ah.” Roux said, stopping herself from saying ‘ew’ because that would surely result in her getting the Iris treatment from Scrungy, namely fists rapidly hitting her in the face. Scrungy and Caeda both left, leaving Roux alone. She noticed one of the new students a table over, Michi, sitting by themselves, sketching away at a notepad.

This could be a potential breakthrough. They could offer me valuable information on the subject I’ve been trying to gather more intel on. But I may have to barter for it. Or let my natural suave nature pave the way.

Roux left her table and approached Michi, who didn’t react to her arrival.

“Hey, so.” Roux asked.

“Hm?” Michi said, barely looking up from their notepad.

“What, um, so,” Roux leaned on the back of a chair and rocked it back and forth. “Sup.”

Michi squinted.

“Yeah, so,” Roux said. “You’re one of them nonbinaries, right? Got some they/them action going on?”

Michi squinted harder. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, um.” Roux said. “Me be just be curious, is all. About. That sort of ‘they’ thing. You get me? You be feel?”

Michi’s eyes were practically closed from how hard they were squinting.

“Right, this is tougher than I thought.” Roux said. “If you don’t wanna spill the beans, you know anyone who could…teach me about it?”

“I don’t really want to teach you about it,” Michi said. “I wouldn’t mind talking about it. When I’m not in the middle of drawing. But if you want someone to teach you, ask a librarian.”

“Hmmm,” Roux said. “That’s true! Librarians do tend to possess some kind of info-based mechanisms. I do have some librarians in my intel chain, but I suppose I can check in with one here to get the scoop a bit quicker than through my various wires.”

Michi shrugged. “Whatever you do is up to you.”

Roux tracked down the main librarian in charge of the lockdown, Stella. She was at the big checkout desk groaning as she tried to get a projector to turn on.

“Hi teacher,” Roux said.

“Sorry, I can’t get the movie to start yet,” Stella said. “So you’ll have to wait a bit longer for me to figure out how to get this thing to not project a screensaver from like twenty years ago.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Roux said. Her ears folded back. “So, um, teacher.”

“You can call me Stella,” she said.

“Uh huh,” Roux said. “I’m um…curious about a topic and am hoping you may be of assistance.”

“Sure, what is it?” Stella set the projector down and rolled her chair to the computer, ready to search.

“I um,” Roux said. “I’m maybe in the business of learning about certain…nonbinary identity related things.”

“Ah, alright!” Stella said. She typed something on the computer. “My little sister,” Stella said. “You know her, probably. Right? I learned a ton about gender from her. I read up on a lot of books as she was figuring out herself more.”

“Mrmgh…” Roux said, unsure how to process this. She expected Stella to tell her no or make her leave. She wasn’t prepared for willing help searching. 

“Books sound boring,” Roux said, her natural reflex of being snotty to people genuinely trying to help her kicking in. She had to work past the reflex because this was important. “But…I do want to know about the…topic. So if there are any you can find. I would…be felt. In my feelings.”

Stella laughed. “I’ll try to find some that aren’t boring.” She jotted something down on a note. “So here are the call numbers for a few I recommend. I have a few other recs, but it doesn’t look like they’re in our collection when I searched the catalog, we might have to interlibrary loan those if you want more. And if you need any help finding those just let me know!”

“Groovy.” Roux said. “Thank you, teacher! I will get reading right away!”

“Any time!” Stella said.

Roux darted off into the shelves, feeling like the potential breakthrough had been upgrade to major breakthrough status.

***

Naomi sighed as she carried an unconscious Laenie Aadris to a room where she couldn’t cause further damage. The carrying a potentially dangerous Cani around was nothing to her, she was a hall monitor after all. What was something to her was her ex following her around.

“Now isn’t the time, Clover.” Naomi said.

“When is, Naomi?” Clover asked. “I just want to talk. About us. I know we’re done, but…”

Naomi stopped. “We’re done because of you. I don’t want to talk about us right now, especially when I’m holding a rogue Exa Cani who could wake up and transform any second. Today is not the day for this.” She turned in a huff. She hoped Clover wouldn’t follow her any further, but she knew better than to expect her to stop there. She was so angry she didn’t notice something fall out of Laenie’s pocket, thinking the clacking sound on the ground was just her heels on the tile floor.

Scrungy watched as the two second years argued. She kind of hoped the situation would escalate into a fight, then she could jump in and get some action in. Scrungy was distracted as something fell out of the tiny girl the prefect carried around. It was a white disk.

The disk rolled down the hall, bouncing off Scrungy’s feet before falling on its side.

“Huh…” Scrungy said, scooping it off the ground. It was one of the void checkpoint disks. She was told they let you go back to a certain spot on the void, the same way a video game saves progress. Also that they like coated them with something nasty that makes them taste bad so no one would eat them. Scrungy gave it a lick, and sure enough, it tasted terrible.

“So if that’s true….” Scrungy said. She clicked the button on the top.

A voice recording came out from the disk. “Please scrape fang in center area for traversal.”

“So they don’t want us to taste them, but we gotta use our fangs on them, makes sense.” Scrungy said. Still, this seemed a lot more fun than going back to the intensely boring library, so she scraped her fang, heading off to an unknown locale.